For the Love of Hops with Stan Hieronymus – BeerSmith Podcast #52

by Brad Smith on December 26, 2012 · 1 comment

This week Stan Hieronymus joins me to discuss his new book “For the Love of Hops” (Amazon link). Stan has spent the last five years studying hop growing, production, and its use in both home brewing and commercial beer brewing.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (42:05)

  • Stan Hieronymus is my guest this week. Stan just published a new book For the Love of Hops (Amazon affiliate link) for Brewers Publications that goes into great detail on the history, growth, processing and use of hops in beer. It is an amazing book both for the professional and homebrewer.
  • We start with a few minutes about his new book, which is part of the four book series on beer brewing ingredients including: Yeast: A Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation, and the upcoming Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers (Amazon links)
  • We discuss the amazing things hops do for beer – in addition to bitterness, they play a role in foam, aroma, flavor, preserving the beer, and more.
  • Stan talks about the history of hops – where it came from and how it came to be used in beer
  • Stan describes how the hop industry has changed over the years – moving toward higher alpha production, but also the rise of the microbrewing industry driving aroma production as well as higher quality standards.
  • We discuss isomerization as well as aroma and how our understanding of hop use has evolved
  • Stan describes the major aroma hop oils and the flavors they contribute to a finished beer. Many of these oils are volatile – they are easily boiled off
  • We talk about how our evolving understanding of hop flavor is driving more late hop additions in beer including post-boil, whirlpool and steeped hops
  • Stan describes how our knowledge of dry hops has increased, and how it is now best to keep dry hops down to 3 days exposure or less. Some brewers are even using two dry hopping stages to avoid grassy flavors.
  • We talk about proper hop storage and how to maintain hop freshness
  • Stan discusses some of the things that can go wrong with hops including off, grassy and skunky flavors
  • I ask Stan to provide a few closing tips for home brewers

Thanks to Stan Hieronymus for appearing on the show and also to you for listening!

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